


The Sunlight is At the End of the Road

by asuralucier



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Ambiguity, And then into something else, Character Study, Dealing with injuries, Gen, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Post-Canon, Renzoku, Roommates, Slow Burn, What Ifs, rivals turned friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-16 01:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17539694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: "Nothing. Maybe I'm jealous."Twenty years after Seigaku, Tezuka runs a celebrated sports rehab clinic in Berlin. Atobe has gone pro. Yet, they are never too far from one another.





	1. Chapter 1

The Sonnenlicht Klinik was nestled in the affluent suburb of Prenzlauer Berg in northeast Berlin, a clean, unremarkable sturdy Wilhelmine building like many others around it, a stone’s throw away from a famous public park. The man who founded the clinic was one Tezuka Kunimitsu, a man who lived and breathed tennis. The rumor was that he’d been a remarkable rising tennis star in junior high, but after a match that devastated his shoulder in his third year, he’d come to seek his own recovery in Berlin. From then, he’d never really got back into tennis properly again, but he’d received a number of coaching engagements from the age of sixteen onwards and his career had taken a very different turn. Nobody knew specific details for sure, Tezuka was reportedly a very private person. 

From even its inception, The Sonnenlicht Klinik remained well-received by the sports world. Although Tezuka had started out with a focus on tennis, he’d since expanded to include other sports and the clinic spared no expense hiring all sorts of experts: doctors, physical therapists, coaches, and even, at the insistence of some of its donors, a dedicated PR and marketing team. 

That famous professionals would drop in on Tezuka from time to time surprised no one. However, the absent element of surprise said nothing of the excitement that Atobe’s arrivals still generated. It was also either a testament to the kids’ lack of object permanence or Atobe’s enduring presence because the man dropped in on Tezuka as often as he could manage. Once a month, sometimes more. 

“ _Herr_ Atobe! Can I have your autograph?” 

“Sure, I’ve got a minute to spare. I’m making it out to…?” 

“Robert. Maria, give Atobe some room to breathe, please.” 

Atobe raised his eyes to meet Tezuka’s. The man was leaning against the doorframe of his office and looked amused. It took Atobe many years to realize this but sometimes Tezuka was _amused_. 

“I don’t mind,” Atobe said. 

“But I do,” Tezuka returned. “Come on. I’ve poured us drinks.”

“Coach, you’re no fun,” Robert pouted. 

“If you want his autograph, then it’s five laps apiece. And no shirking it by running the inside track, either.” 

Atobe laughed. He couldn’t help himself, “Don’t I feel expensive.” 

Robert and Maria seemed to think about it for a moment, then they both shrugged after exchanging a glance, “Worth it!” 

After Atobe scribbled his name twice on leaflets provided by the clinic, Robert and Maria scampered off, per their agreement. Tezuka didn’t move from his office door.

“You’re not going to check that they’re actually running laps,” Atobe finally moved into Tezuka’s office and closed the door behind him. Tezuka went to sit behind his desk and pushed a tumbler of what smelled like very nice Japanese whiskey in Atobe’s direction. 

“Did Sakaki-sensei ever bother? That’s part of the discipline. Building trust in the routine.” 

Atobe blanched, “Well, _no_. But that was different.” 

Tezuka looked amused again, “Not as different as you’d think.” 

“Probably not,” Atobe agreed after a pause. “You’re probably scarier than he ever was.” 

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Tezuka said. He raised his tumbler, “Cheers.” 

 

There was a woman with Atobe and Tezuka volunteered to go fetch another tumbler. 

“We’ve shared spit,” said Atobe, as a way of implying that he and the woman had shared much worse. “We can make do with one tumbler.” 

The woman gave him a look, “ _Keigo_ ,” a bit girlish but also a bit pleased. She was younger than him, but not so young as to not know that one day, someone like Atobe Keigo might not want to show her off anymore. 

Later, the woman went off to the ladies’ and Tezuka wondered aloud, why she seemed familiar. 

“She’s been in films,” Atobe said. “My agent is always telling me I’m wasted on the court. This is a compromise.”

Tezuka thought about telling Atobe that this was not the way compromises worked. Compromises meant giving something up and so far as he could tell, Atobe was still making do with a bit of everything. There was a part of Tezuka that was less kind, that thought that the agent’s comments also pointed Atobe towards retirement. Trust the man not to take the hint. 

The resentment settled in Tezuka’s shoulder, coiled in his muscles, “Well, good for you.” 

 

Some months later, Tezuka was invited to Atobe’s bachelor party in Zurich and then Atobe’s wedding held in Semmering, a popular ski resort in Lower Austria. At the wedding, Tezuka met a man named Urs who was an opera singer. Urs spoke like he sang, in a rich bodied baritone. Urs said that he had recommended the Sonnenlicht Klinik to one of his nephews who’d hurt himself playing football; the work that Tezuka did with young sports stars was important and impressive. Urs was particularly impressed by the miracle blogs that were published often about the stubborn ones who couldn’t get over the long memory of their injury. 

(Tezuka disapproved of the blogs privately, finding them at best hokey, and at worst manipulative and invasive. However, he couldn’t argue with their market value and the good the blogs did the clinic as a whole.)

“To be fair, I’d never gotten over mine,” Tezuka admitted. The pain snuck up on him sometimes when he least expected it. Like now. Urs apprarently saw his wince and immediately offered his glass of wine, which was nearly full to the brim. 

“You’ve gotten over something else,” Urs said. Tezuka followed his gaze to Atobe and his new wife. Atobe looked pleasantly wasted. His collar was open, his tie was loose, and there was a spot of something reddish on the fabric that was pressed to his breastbone. Maybe wine, or lipstick. 

“It was twenty years ago,” Tezuka said. “At some point, a grudge becomes the stuff of youth.”

“It’s not the shoulder,” Urs pointed out. “More the life that you could have had. It could be you with that film actress. I still can’t remember her name.”

“Neither can I,” Tezuka said, and helped himself generously to a swallow of Urs’s wine. 

 

“You’re moving in with _Urs_ ,” Atobe’s eyes nearly fell out of his head what with the force of his glare. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

“You seem busy. And happy.” News about Atobe and his new wife Amelia was difficult to avoid. Amelia was an avid user of several social media platforms (Tezuka could never remember which ones) and as far as Tezuka could tell, married life hadn’t dampened Atobe and kept his interest purely because it didn’t really interfere with tennis and Amelia liked the limelight just as much. The couple had recently gone on a showy vacation in Greece. 

“I,” Atobe stopped himself. “Yes, but don’t you think that this is the sort of things friends tell each other?” 

“Urs asked me not to,” Tezuka said. “I gather he’s not terribly fond of you.” 

“You’d guess right,” Atobe sighed. “Apparently my phone went off once while he was in the middle of a rousing solo in Don Giovanni. It’s libel, I tell you. It’s not as if I did it on purpose.”

Tezuka nearly laughed, it seemed like a sure thing, from where Atobe stood. But at the last minute, Tezuka seemed to swallow the urge and the sound and settled for looking simply amused again. “That’s very gauche of you.”

“I’m only a man,” Atobe shrugged. “Also, I admit to nothing.”

“You always wanted to be more,” said Tezuka. 

“Contrary to what you think of me,” Atobe fixed the man with a steady look. “I have grown up. A little. As needed. Are you happy? He is a very prickly person. I didn’t think you’d have the patience for that sort of thing.” 

“I suppose you would know,” Tezuka said dryly and poured them more whiskey. 

 

Atobe fractured his wrist attempting a late game Tannhauser serve and Tezuka went to see him at the hospital. He was told by the attending doctor that he’d just about missed all the excitement. The media storm had swarmed unending around Atobe for two days straight. It was any wonder how the patient found any time to rest. Tezuka resisted the urge to inform the doctor that said patient probably rested best when he was at the center of everybody’s attention. 

“No flowers?” Atobe pored his gaze over Tezuka’s empty hands. 

“Better,” there was a lump in Tezuka’s jacket and the man revealed a small box of fine Belgian chocolates bought from a high-end shop in Mitte,“But maybe you’d need to hide them from the nurses.” 

“You let me worry about that,” Atobe said, squirrelling the box away under good arm, as if he was afraid that Tezuka was going to take them away again. “Anyway, thanks for this. Do you ever bring Urs chocolates?” 

“His idea of refinement lies somewhere else,” Tezuka shrugged. “Besides, chocolate does something strange to his vocal chords. He says, I don’t have an ear for this sort of thing.” 

“You know, your boyfriend will be famous until he dies,” Atobe said, sounding oddly far away. 

“And that means, what?” 

Atobe lifted one shoulder; the gesture in another lifetime could have been mocking, but there’s a certain defeat that seems to roll through that shrug. 

“Nothing. Maybe I’m jealous.” 

“He says you’re not even into opera,” Tezuka pointed out. 

“Not of his vocation, you idiot,” Atobe said. “Of his -- I guess you could say, potential for lasting in the cultural consciousness. Take I don’t know, Federer. Nobody remembers him.” 

 

Atobe appeared to have recovered in record time to make it to the Australian Open. He was beat six games to four by a twenty-year-old German, Roger von Hofmiller, who had once spent some time at the Sonnenlicht Klinik for a torn ACL. 

Urs was preparing for a production of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutti and as a general rule, he always spoke as little as possible before the premiere of any performance, preferring to sign instead. As a result, Tezuka was quick to gain a working understanding of sign language although the same limitation didn’t apply to him. So he was slow to learn the actual practice of signing. 

Urs brought him another beer from the fridge and signed, _your boy Roger did you proud_.

Tezuka remembered Roger very little. His forehand needed work. He said so as much and thanked Urs for his beer. “He isn’t my anything. But It’s a shame.” 

Urs frowned. _About Roger’s forehand or Atobe’s loss?_

“Both.” Tezuka said, “I never minded that he did that to my shoulder. I even understood why he did it, and I wonder if I wouldn’t have done the same.” 

“I’ve seen you play,”Urs spoke, a frown limned on his lips. Sometimes he came by the clinic and watched Tezuka with his clients. “You’re the one that keeps insisting that tennis shouldn’t be malicious.” 

“I don’t think he meant to be malicious. Atobe is a lot of things -- shallow, flippant, arrogant. But I don’t think he’s malicious. He wanted to win so badly back then. I think I admired that.” 

Urs was quiet for a moment, and then he stood up, “I think I understand now.” 

 

“What do you mean you broke up?” Atobe stared at him.

“Just what I said,” Tezuka stared down at his cup of dark roast coffee instead. There’s something tugging at the edge of his mind; something unpleasant and foreign, but it isn’t shame or indeed, any other complicated form of upset. “Given the tantrum you threw when I didn’t tell you about the moving in --” 

“Or, you know, the dating, in general,” Atobe supplied, as if that was important. “And it wasn’t a tantrum. It was good will. Genuine concern. I don’t know, Tezuka, maybe he has rubbed off on you.” 

“Or the dating in general,” Tezuka was going to ignore exactly half of what Atobe said. Especially the double entendre, he wasn’t going to lower himself to that and Atobe was likely baiting him on purpose. “Anyway, I no longer have his feelings to consider so there’s nothing stopping me from telling you.” 

Atobe fixed him with a look again, “...He’s away, isn’t he?” 

“Urs will be touring in Vienna for the next two months. He says I’m welcome to stay in the current place until I get things in order, but it’s easier to sleep in my office. Why are you looking at me like that?” 

“You have important donors. People who depend on the clinic for a certain kind of exposure. Trust me, you don’t want to be sending out that sort of message.”

“I wasn’t thinking about putting out a PSA to inform everyone of my transient living situation.” Tezuka pointed out. But if there was one thing he couldn’t grudge Atobe for it was his innate sense of business acumen, instilled in him and developed by all sorts of familial privilege since birth. Thinking about donors, exposure, and charitable reputations was second nature to him, nearly sticking as close to the man’s skin as tennis. 

Not to mention Atobe was a longtime donor to the clinic and sat on its board of executives. 

Atobe just kept looking at him. 

Tezuka was forced to relent, “If you think it will hurt the clinic, then fine. I’ll see about getting a hotel or something for a week.” 

“Stay with me,” Atobe said. “My place sleeps seven and we’ll probably never run into each other. You can stay in the guest suite.” 

The foreign, unpleasant feeling at the back of Tezuka’s head disambiguated itself and became decidedly unwise. “What about your wife?” 

“Filming in Chicago,” Atobe said. He fiddled with his ring. “But she knows that I was going to ask you. She’s only asked that you don’t mess with her bathroom and I went ahead assured her that was hardly going to be a problem. However, it remains my prerogative to steal her shampoo.” He gave his hair a flick. 

 

Atobe’s apartment in Charlottenburg overlooked the river and had four bedrooms plus a balcony. One of the bedrooms was an ensuite and most of Amelia’s fancy toiletries occupied not the bathroom connected the master bedroom, but instead took up most of the counterspace afixed in the smaller toilet in the hall. The apartment also had a well-stocked kitchen and an impressive array of pots, knives, and all the crockery that anyone would ever need. 

“...Do you cook?” 

Atobe snorted, “No. We used to hire a cook. But since Amelia’s off cavorting in America I’ve given the cook the month off. Do you?” 

“A little. I’m still experimenting with the things my mother taught me as not to starve. I’ve mastered chawamushi I think, it was tricky at first, but then I realized that all you need was patience.” 

Atobe laughed, “Yeah, well. You’ve always been better at that than me. Being patient.” 

“Maybe. But you were always more sensible.” 

“Sensible,” Atobe echoed. “A consolation prize if I’ve ever heard of one. I’ll take it.” 

Tezuka didn’t argue and said that he would cook dinner.


	2. Chapter 2

Rumors of Atobe’s retirement swirled in print and on the Internet. It was even mentioned in passing during a sports segment on the radio. Tezuka didn’t see him much but when he did, Atobe made it a point to stay off his phone, as if he was somehow afraid of the news. Because it was not in Tezuka’s nature to pry, he simply didn’t. 

“...Is that me or you?” Atobe looked at him when a dull buzzing permeated through the kitchen. Tezuka was attempting to cut the legs off a chicken and mostly failing to do so. 

“My phone is in my room. It must be you.” 

Atobe went and fetched his phone from his pocket, “... _Scheiße_.” Then he strolled into his bedroom and shut the door. 

When Atobe reappeared, he wore a deep frown and set his phone on the counter. “...Fair word of warning, I’ve just had to call Amelia a cab from the airport.” 

Atobe’s apartment was convenient for Tezuka in terms of the clinic. He also had very little to complain about as the man’s houseguest. It occurred to Tezuka then, that while he’d certainly been lax in searching for a more permenant place to rent recently, it hadn’t yet being a month. “You sound like you weren’t expecting her.” 

“I wasn’t. It’s a bit of a long story and involves Snapchat.” 

“Sorry. Snap what?” 

Atobe looked like he was about to launch into a lengthy explanation and then thought better of it, “...She is off filming. That part wasn’t a lie. But we were having a few...disagreements. The best I could hazard to guess, is that she thought this would help.” 

Tezuka looked at the mangled chicken on the chopping board; he was not particularly superstitious, but this seemed like a bad sign all around.

“Would it help if I left?” 

“Left as in moved out?” Atobe blinked. 

“Yes, well, if you’d like,” Tezuka paused. “But more immediately, I was thinking that I could go out somewhere and take a book with me.” 

“Tezuka, I.” Instead of finishing his sentence, Atobe crossed over to the wine rack and grabbed an unopened bottle of red. After glancing at the label, he seemed to deflate even further and popped the cork. “...For starters, do you want some?” 

Tezuka had the feeling that Atobe for whatever reason needed him to say yes so he nodded, “I wouldn’t mind.” 

Atobe fetched two glasses and filled one to the brim and the other halfway. He glared at his wine glass for a long time before sighing again, “I don’t want to retire. Not yet. She thought it would be embarrassing if I kept on playing. That Roger von Hofmiller would be the first in a string of disasters that would dismantle my career. She thought it was more important to preserve what I had already, instead of being stubborn.” 

Tezuka stuck his nose in the wine before he tasted it. Atobe said it was good manners once, so Tezuka made it a habit. He thought he was getting better at recognizing good wines from bad ones, and thought he could detect a fruity note that was nearly cloying. A part of him wanted to say that Amelia wasn’t wrong. Another part of him told him that this was exactly the wrong thing to say. 

So Tezuka said, “At least you have a career to dismantle.” 

Atobe didn’t say anything. He drank more wine, and then put down his glass, “That’s true.” Never _I’m sorry_ , but Tezuka didn’t take much stock in apologies anyway and never expected one. 

“...What does this have to do with Snapchat?” 

“You know,” said Atobe and made a face. Tezuka thought he could puzzle out the rest even without lurid details. “Her excuse was that she didn’t feel listened to. And that my obsession with tennis made her feel so _alone_. She practically takes off her clothes for a living and accuses me of being _obsessed_ with tennis. It’s my fucking job.”

Now Tezuka could say, with a little irony in his voice, “I don’t think she’s wrong on that count, Atobe.” While the argument was possibly not about Amelia’s alleged infidelity or in fact Atobe’s incapacity to listen to his wife, maybe the argument at its heart circled back to being about tennis as a certainty. Something in Tezuka’s chest was feeling tight and alien again. 

“Anyway, yes,” Atobe drank more wine and detracted his gaze from Tezuka. “I think you should go now.” 

 

They did not speak for an entire year after that outside of what was absolutely necessary. Atobe still dropped by the clinic from time to time and consented to hit with some of Tezuka’s clients who were his fans. Atobe viewed this as a charitable contribution to the future of rising tennis stars and he’d balked when Tezuka suggested through an intermediary that he could be paid for his time. 

Atobe retired and then he’d divorced. The divorce was kept quiet and more importantly, out of public records. Certain tabloids speculated whether or not Atobe was paying his ex-wife alimony. A few sources even tossed around the absolutely ludicrous theory that Amelia’s continued popularity as an actress meant that she made more than her sports star has-been ex-husband and was therefore paying him an allowance. 

There was a part of Tezuka that now understood what Urs meant. He thought that this discomfort would pass too, and only bother him intermittently like his shoulder in time. 

 

“We did fight about tennis,” Amelia said. “I did think he was obsessed and that it wasn’t healthy for him. Even if it was his job. I certainly don’t make a habit obsessing over other people.” 

Berlin was a small city; all cities were small, once you’d lived there a while. Tezuka had been passing by what seemed like a busy film shoot just breaking for lunch, when he’d heard his name being called out in a distantly familiar voice. Amelia had a new haircut, possibly a newish metal bar through the cartilage of her ear and a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. It looked expensive, but not showy. She insisted on buying him a meal and they settled on a bistro a few blocks away and she kept her sunglasses on indoors. Tezuka couldn’t imagine that Amelia had anything she wanted to say to him and it was curiosity, to say the least, that kept him from declining her invitation outright. 

“I think sports is different from acting,” Tezuka pointed out, but he was careful to word his answer away from anything that even resembled a defense in Atobe’s favor. If nothing else, it was polite to avoid such bias. “The only way to play a sport and to play it well is to let yourself be overtaken by it.”

“...But after? And when the job chews you up and spits you out, who are you then?” 

Tezuka wondered if metal bars through the cartilage of one’s ears was still going to be a fashionable option ten, even five years from now. It seemed uncharitable of him to ask so he kept it to himself. Amelia seemed older now than when Tezuka had first met her. There was more of a skeletal quality to her hands and the makeup she was wearing somehow didn’t seem as effortless as before. “He is retired, not dead. If he isn’t dead, then I like to think there’s time.” 

Their orders came and Amelia drank fruit juice daintily out of a straw, “Did he speak to you about why?” 

Tezuka demurred, “I believe there was a mention of something called Snapchat.” He didn’t add any other details because he did not have them. 

Amelia colored, but only a little, “I don’t excuse what I did, Tezuka.” She called him Tezuka, stumbling over it just slightly. “It was wrong of me, but I don’t think I could have done it any other way. I was never going to win. Against his unhealthy obsession with tennis. Against his unhealthy obsession with you.” 

Up until now, Tezuka listened to everything Amelia had been saying with half an ear. She’d either told him what he already knew, or what he already suspected. For one thing, he always did hold the private belief that Atobe needed (and by virtue of that _wanted_ ) tennis more than Tezuka himself. While Tezuka’s family was by no means poor, they were astutely not wealthy and his father and grandfather had instilled in him the value of restraint. He hadn’t practiced that restraint when it’d really mattered and there was always that nagging feeling in the back of his own head that it hadn’t really been Atobe who cost him tennis, but Tezuka’s own stubbornness. 

“I think…” Tezuka tried and couldn’t find a way of finishing. He cleared his throat and started over, “I’m sorry if there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. But I was never inappropriate with him and he certainly wasn’t, with me.” 

“That’s not what I mean,” Amelia said; her tone was kind, but at the edge of it was the quick rush of her remaining patience, “Keigo told me that too and I believe him. I’m not an idiot.” 

“Then I don’t understand what you mean,” Tezuka said. He did not feel like an idiot too often, but perhaps today was the day to start. That very strange alien feeling was there again, entwining with the more familiar resentment in his shoulder. 

“He didn’t want to retire,” Amelia said. “It wasn’t even because of his stubbornness. It was because of yours. He thought if he’d hurt himself enough, then he’d understand and you would see.” 

Tezuka said nothing. 

The dull beep of a phone interrupted the silence and Amelia looked relieved to be attached to her phone again. She thumbed briefly and looked up, “I’ve talked too much. I have to go. But Keigo did mention that you weren’t speaking, so I thought you should know. I hope I see you around.” 

 

Now that Atobe didn’t have ongoing public engagements, he turned up at the clinic about two or three days a week and still insisted to everyone that he didn’t mind donating his time to a good cause. Reports of Atobe’s martyrdom reached Tezuka through various channels, as if everyone thought Tezuka would find Atobe’s charity either entertaining or wildly out of character and therefore alarming. 

But Atobe didn’t show up on Thursdays and it was two weeks to the day after he’d run into Amelia on the street that Tezuka gathered enough courage to drive to Charlottenburg. He picked what he thought was an inoffensive hour (two in the afternoon) and held out the secret hope that the other man would not be home. After all, even if Atobe wanted to convey the picture of his life being over without the pressures of the tennis circuit, Tezuka knew it wasn’t true. 

But the Atobe who came to the door after Tezuka had lied to the concierge about being expected was still in his dressing gown and nursing a mug of what smelled like very nice coffee. 

“...I wasn’t expecting you.” 

“I lied my way up,” Tezuka said. 

Atobe rubbed at the bridge of his nose and sighed, “I’m so deeply impressed that I won’t demand that Michael be fired. Come on.” 

Tezuka stopped inside and toed off his shoes. Out of habit, he lined them up neatly on the shoe rack fit snug by the door.

Atobe said, “Is everything all right at the clinic?” 

“I’m sure something is going wrong as we speak,” Tezuka said dryly. “But no more than usual.” 

Atobe gave him a look and went to sit down in the living room. He sank down in what Tezuka had come to know as his favorite armchair, always tilted at an angle towards the floor-to-ceiling windows, the glass always sparkling clean. 

“So, what do you want?” 

Tezuka had rehearsed during the drive over, various answers to this question and faced with its reality and proximity, found that none of what he had thought about passed muster for this instance. He settled for, “I didn’t know you were still in touch with Amelia.” 

“Mostly through my lawyers,” Atobe answered readily. “But we are civil enough. It helped that she did write me a formal apology as part of the divorce proceedings.” Then he added, “...Not that it’s any of your business.” 

“It isn’t, but,” Tezuka stopped himself. “I ran into her the other day. She bought me lunch because she wanted to speak to me.” 

Atobe narrowed his eyes but then remembered himself, “About what, exactly?” 

“Why you didn’t want to retire. That you wanted to hurt yourself.” Tezuka could have added, _and that you’re obsessed with me_ , but that seemed self-centered and cruel. “...She was also curious as to why we weren’t speaking.” 

“We’re speaking right now,” Atobe said a touch sharply. “And she hadn’t a right to ambush you like that.” 

“I would hardly call it an ambush.” 

Atobe sighed loudly through his nose, “It’s after two, isn’t it?” 

“Yes?” 

Tezuka watched as Atobe heaved himself up from the armchair. The man didn’t seem old, but he seemed suddenly human, with all of the world’s limitations bearing down on his bones. 

 

Atobe offered him a glass of red from yet another bottle sat on the wine rack. 

“I drove here,” said Tezuka, eyeing the red with a noticeably tempted glance. “I shouldn’t.” 

“Have a glass,” Atobe filled a glass halfway. “It’s probably going to be a long conversation. At worst, it’s not like you can’t afford a taxi.” 

“Do you think so?” 

Atobe shrugged, “Just drink.” 

Tezuka stared down at his wine, “I wasn’t planning on staying long.” That was the truth. He was on his lunch, and he’d scheduled a meeting for later in the afternoon. Although when push came to shove, Tezuka would have to admit that the purpose of this drop-in probably required more than a flying visit.

“I’ll stop lying to myself if you will,” said Atobe. “Drink.” 

Tezuka said, “I have a meeting.”

“I dare you to cancel it,” said Atobe. “You’ve probably never done that in your life.” 

“It’s irresponsible,” Tezuka said immediately, as if paying lip-service to a version of himself. 

“Cancel it anyway.” 

Under Atobe’s watchful gaze, Tezuka dutifully phoned his head secretary and lied (again); this time, about a private emergency which had only just arisen without his knowledge. The veneer of his lie was thin, but the structure of the lie held true. However, Tezuka’s schedule was clear all next week save Tuesday morning and the secretary was to apologize to the donor and pass on an invitation to lunch. When Tezuka got off the phone again, Atobe said, “You didn’t tell me it was with a donor.”

“Would it have made any difference?” Tezuka finally allowed himself a sip of the wine. It was good, markedly better than the red he’d had over a year ago in this very kitchen. 

Atobe at least put up the pretense of thinking about it, “No. But I like your attention, and I’ll bet that I’m worth more than whoever you had to meet. I’ll write you a cheque.” 

“I’m, was. I was meeting Johannes Filip Berg,” Tezuka felt bad pulling one over Atobe when the man was feeling such honesty in his veins for what seemed like the first time in a while. And there was also something about the way Atobe had admitted liking Tezuka’s attention, that Tezuka allowed himself to like in turn, if only a little. 

“The documentary filmmaker?” Atobe’s expression paused, as if to arrange itself into something else. He took a sip of wine, “I didn’t know you knew him.” 

“I don’t, really. We were introduced recently by the parent of a client.” 

It occurred to Tezuka to ask how Atobe became acquaintances with Johannes Filip Berg, but Berg had a number of sentimental documentaries under his belt and Tezuka, after securing the meeting with Berg, had done his due diligence and had his secretary or someone compile a list of Berg’s films and a balanced smattering of reviews across the board. It wouldn’t do, he thought, to show up to a meeting where the other person had a reputation only to plead ignorance. Nestled between raving reviews and slightly lackluster reviews about Berg’s latest darling, a short biopic about a Para-Olympic skier, that he had been in talks to direct a heart-rending adaptation of an Interwar novel by a Danish writer but pulled out in the end. Amelia Wisengrund had been in talks for the starring role but the project had so far been tabled. 

“The clinic’s coming up six years, isn’t it?” Atobe pressed his mouth against his wine glass. 

“Why do you say it like that? Like I want something.” 

“Everyone wants something,” Atobe said. “Even you. We can start with why you’re here. It’s not as if I don’t know a coincidence when I see it. Subtle’s never really been your game.” 

Tezuka said, “I don’t have a game.” 

“My point exactly,” Atobe pointed his glass in Tezuka’s direction. 

Tezuka eyed Atobe’s carpet. It was spotless. Maybe the man had skipped out on the cook in order to hire a better housekeeper. He inhaled deeply, weighed the breath at the top of his throat and swallowed again. 

“...Tell me why you’re in your dressing gown,” Tezuka said, choosing a middling path. “And I’ll tell you why I’m here.” 

“...I’m in my dressing gown because,” Atobe paused. He seemed to be weighing his answer too, but then he sighed. “Did I ever tell you I sleep like Buckminster Fuller?” 

“Like who?” Tezuka had to think, “I’ve heard the name.” 

“He’s an inventor,” Atobe helped himself to more wine. “American. Possibly insane. He devised a way to save time on sleep by napping on command. It reportedly does work, but it drove everyone else around him crazy. Including his business partners, so he stopped. It was like he was wasting his own time instead.” 

Tezuka almost thought that he could touch him, but stayed still, “I can’t imagine Amelia being too thrilled with that.” 

“She wasn’t,” Atobe said. “So you know, you don’t get to feel too special. It wasn’t only tennis.” 

“I believe you,” said Tezuka. “That’s why I’m here, I guess.” 

Atobe reached for Tezuka’s hand and the touch of his fingers was alien and familiar all at once, “So what do we do now?” 

Tezuka closed his eyes and felt the rays of sunlight just teeming outside of his ribcage, although the view from Atobe’s full-length windows boasted nothing but gray. 

“Maybe we can finish this wine. And, I don’t know. Take our time.” 

Atobe was already tipping more wine into his glass, “I am way ahead of you.”


End file.
